


When the Wolves Come Home

by sparkly_butthole



Series: Banned Bingo [2]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Banned Together Bingo, Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26028964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkly_butthole/pseuds/sparkly_butthole
Summary: “I trust you with my life, Cougs.”
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Series: Banned Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889329
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	When the Wolves Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my Banned Bingo square: Cannibalism. If this is not something you're interested in reading based on the tags, PLEASE TURN BACK NOW. I am not responsible for what happens beyond this point.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“This is supposed to be a simple in n’ out,” Clay tells them, voice hiccuping when the van hits a bump. Pooch’s bobblehead pup shakes its head at him as though disappointed. Or maybe disbelieving. He’s been with them long enough to know not to trust Clay on this. “Jensen monitors from the van. Alpha squad - me and Roque - get the bad guy. Beta squad - “ Pooch coughs in protest; how dare Clay call him a  _ beta _ , “ - you’re responsible for the data.”

_ Click. _

“You got somethin’ to say, Jensen?” Roque asks. “Better speak up now.”

The pen Jensen had been playing with gets tossed in the air and caught one-handed.

_ Click. _

“Not really? It’s just... mad scientists and all. Not our usual thing, if you get what I mean.”

Clay sends  _ grumpy dwarf _ face in Jensen’s direction. “I’m sure you’ll explain anyway.”

“Right.”  _ Click.  _ “Look, this is out of our pay grade.” He sounds uncharacteristically serious. Cougar sits a little straighter in his corner, though he keeps his hat over his eyes.

“Anything in particular you’re worried about?” Pooch asks, glancing in the rearview mirror. “It’s not like we don’t get you, but we don’t exactly have grounds to refuse a mission.”

_ Click. _

Roque reaches for the pen, but Jensen is fast. Faster than he looks. He moves it away and tosses it in the air, catches it one-handed again. “Fearing for our life and limb is part of our job. Literally in the job description. Fuckin’ dumb of us, if you ask me.” He sighs and gives Cougar a quick glance. It’s too fast for Cougar to get a read on it. “I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling about this one.”

“We’ll be careful,” Pooch promises, openly sincere and yeah - a little fuckin’ dumb. Of course they’ll be careful. That isn’t the point, and they all know it. Jensen almost has a sixth sense about this kind of thing.  _ That’s _ the point.

“You got me. Nothin’ to be afraid of when I’m around, amigo,” Cougar jokes, doing his best to lighten Jensen’s mood. He’s not very good at it, though, not when Jake’s in this mood, and it doesn’t take.

“Yeah,” Jensen says. He swallows nervously. It’s giving Cougar the heebie-jeebies to see his best-friend-turned-secret-partner so unsettled. He can tell Jensen wishes Cougar were anywhere but here.

Cougar reaches out to take Jensen’s hand, careful to keep their contact hidden in the van’s back seat. Jensen squeezes, but doesn’t let the pen in his other hand go. He thumbs it all through the ride to the facility like a countdown to their doom.

_ Click. _

  
  
  


***

  
  


“This is supposed to be a simple in n’ out,” Jensen mutters into the mic, feet stuttering around the next corner. He runs as fast as he can in the confined space, which isn’t very. “Why does anyone ever listen to you, Cl- alpha?”

“No need to snarl at me,” Clay responds, breathing heavily. Of course, he’s got the payload on his end, carrying it to the car like a sack of useless meat. It’s  _ Cougar _ who went down, Cougar who got hit with a fucking beam of god-knows-what. A laser, of all things. Science fiction is cool and all, but Jensen swears up and down that that scientist will eat a bullet if Cougar’s down for good, resulting court martial or no.

“Cougs, please be okay,” Jensen pleads, ignoring Clay and the rules of communication while on an assignment entirely. Nobody comments on his breach of etiquette. And that scares Jensen. Big time.

Pooch is finishing up in the lab where Cougar had gone down, downloading the last bit of data to their external hard drive. Jensen will back it up later, will go through it bit by painstaking bit to find a lead on the real bad guy here - the boss of these yahoos - while the others perform some questioning of their own. Not Jake’s thing, that part. He likes the cleanliness of numbers in comparison to blood and piss and vomit on the floor.

Right now, he feels like he’s going to be the one to vomit when he finds Cougar laid out like a damsel in distress. Pooch finishes up just as Jensen falls to his knees at Cougar’s side, and helps lift his dead weight over Jensen’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

He doesn’t remember much of what comes after. The data is there in front of his face, but he can’t focus on anything but the steady, shallow breathing at his side. They’ve got Cougar as comfortable as possible. At least he won’t have a crick in his neck when he wakes up. If he wakes up.

“That place was weirdly easy to break into,” Pooch says slowly. He sounds like a man preparing to mount the gallows, depressed and dejected. Personally, Jensen wants to fight the next living being to even look at him sideways. “I mean, we knew about the lack of security, but I’m the second-tier tech guy and I got in their system within a few minutes.”

“You think it was a trap?” Roque asks. “Man, they couldn’t have known we were coming.”

“How else do you explain it? That laser was ready to go off.”

Jensen watches Clay from the corner of his eye. He’s not focusing on much, but he can tell enough from the way Clay’s lips thin and his jaw twitches. The poor scientist tied in the back is about to have a Bad Day, capital B, capital D.

“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Jensen says tightly, unconsciously smoothing Cougar’s hair away from his face. It’s one of Cougar’s pet peeves, though he refuses to cut his hair no matter how much the brass yells at him. “Just figure out if there’s anything we need to do to get Cougar back on his feet.”

Roque, sitting directly in front of him in the van, hangs his head. Clay is staring at him, at his fingers as they comb through Cougar’s long, soft hair. There is a thoughtful look on his face, and Jensen is reminded that Clay is not as dumb as he sometimes seems.

Indeed, when Clay glances up to meet his gaze, Jensen sees that he has put the puzzle together. But he doesn’t say anything, and he’s the first to look away from the intensity of Jensen’s stare. He gives Jensen a short nod, a tacit understanding and unofficial sanctioning of their relationship. It’s the best Jake could’ve hoped for, and it’s something to be grateful for on this awful, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

“We’ll get it straightened out, Jay,” Pooch says from the driver’s seat. “He’ll be fine. He’s been through worse.”

They don’t know that. Nobody has any idea what that goddamn laser might’ve done to him. But Jensen keeps his mouth shut and focuses on the rise and fall of Cougar’s chest, the peaceful look on his face, the silky texture of his hair.

  
  


***

  
  


Cougar wakes up the next morning asking for water. There hadn’t been medical help nearby since of course mad scientists have to have their lair in the middle of nowhere, so he’s been taken care of by second-rate field medicine. Jensen’s specifically, because he hasn’t let anyone else near his man, wanting to growl when anyone is within a few feet of him.

“All I’ve got is ice chips from the hotel lobby, buddy,” he murmurs, helping Cougar sit up, fluffing the pillows at his back so he can lean against them. “Need to make sure you’re okay.”

Cougar blinks at him, and Jake tries to hold it together. He knows there is an eerie stillness to him now; it’s already got the others on edge. And it’s not just because they’re... together, now, or whatever they are to each other. This was - _ is _ \- terrifying, because that laser hit Cougar and knocked him unconscious for a full twenty hours, and in Jensen’s experience that kind of weapon is not built to turn people into kittens.

Jensen shudders and tries to keep the movement from Cougar, who is still half out of it. He focuses on feeding Cougar ice chips and getting him to lie back again.

“You worry too much, Jake,” Cougar murmurs when Jake wraps all four limbs around him and holds him like something unspeakably precious.

“Don’t even start because that’s an argument you aren’t going to win.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Cougar says with a twinkle in his eye.

Jake kisses him until neither of them can breathe.

  
  


***

  
  


They’re all cleared by medical the next day, Cougar included. He and Jensen take some overdue time off and make their way to Jake’s house off-base. Jake is determined to pamper Cougar and get him to rest.

His first clue that something is still awry is that Cougar doesn’t argue that point. He’s usually a terrible patient, but now - now he is very much not, meekly letting Jensen settle him in his bed their first night home.

“This isn’t how I imagined getting you into my bed for the first time,” he mutters, lying down next to Cougar.

The next morning, Cougar is running a fever of one hundred and two degrees, and Jensen, who has been in too many near-death situations to count, is truly terrified for the first time in his life.

It never occurs to him that he should be scared not for Cougar, but  _ of _ him.

At least not until it’s too late.

  
  


***

  
  


Here’s what Cougar remembers, later, how Jake’s (and by extension his) destruction had begun: hunger. Not the kind of hunger that gnaws at a man’s stomach, nor the kind that leaves him shaky and weak.

It’s a hunger of the spirit, of his very  _ essence, _ something ancient and unknowable that eats him from the inside out, leaves him a hollow shell filled with nothing but the desire for more. He is a void, but not one made of starlight; he is solid in three-dimensional space, he occupies and is aware of the world in a way he hadn’t known possible.

At the same time, somehow, he is unaware of  _ reality. _ It’s like he’s ascended (or descended) to a different plane of existence, one where his human mind and his new ego can barely communicate; all that he picks up is sound and fury. Rage, effervescent, fills his veins.

But there are moments of clarity. Moments where he feels stark terror at what he is becoming, moments where he knows that there is something fundamentally wrong with him on an actual, physical level. He is dangerous, _ beyond _ dangerous - Carlos Alvarez is not made of sunshine and bunnies, but what he is becoming is closer to the devil incarnate than the world’s most talented sniper. It’s comparing the sun to the galaxy, and the sheer immensity of it is nothing he can truly comprehend.

“Go,” he tells Jake, wracked with pain, curled in on himself, fetal and weeping. It’s too big, he’s too  _ much _ for his own skin. “I am not myself. Jake, _ go _ . While you can.”

Jake, the idiot, scoffs like he could possibly understand the enormity of what Cougar is trying to pronounce here. “I refuse to leave your side,” he responds, so stubborn and beautiful and oh,  _ gods, _ Cougar is going to destroy him. He can feel it in his bones.

“Jake,” he pleads, and the desperation in his cracking voice causes Jake to pause in his ministrations, Cougar shirtless and sweating and helpless on his bed while he wipes him clean with a rag. He’s been reduced to this, but it won’t last long. Whatever monster is growing within Cougar is gaining strength, and Cougar is  _ exhausted. _ “You have to leave me. I will hurt you.”

“You couldn’t hurt a fly right now. Look at you.”

“You don’t understand - “

“I trust you, okay? With my life. With my soul. What have we been through together that we haven’t gotten out of, huh? No.”

Cougar tries, he really does, tries to get Jake to see that - that whatever this is, it will break him into a thousand pieces and spit him out the other side. And if that happens, it will destroy Cougar, as well.

But he can’t fight it for long. Nobody could, shaking out of their skin like this, buzzing with the devil’s own energy.

There is evil here, Cougar knows. Snipers, government men, military men,  _ low _ men - they don’t believe in evil. Not really. There are shades of grey, but everything can be justified. So he’d thought.  _ Hindsight and all that, _ he thinks bitterly as he goes under again.

Whatever dimension he’s landed in is awash in scarlet, the color and texture of dripping blood. Pools of it. There is iron on his tongue and soaking into his skin, and he is enraged, a creature caged and in a corner and ready to fight to the death for survival. There is only instinct, the consciousness that was once Cougar an inconsequential blade of grass in an entire universe.

When he comes back to wakefulness, Jake is on his back, Cougar leaning over him, growling - a real animal growl, nothing a human throat should be capable of making. He wants Jake, wants to tear him out, crawl inside his skin,  _ wear _ him.

And still,  _ still, _ Jake Jensen’s face shows no fear. His lips are drawn in a tight line and he is shaking, but his eyes are clear like he has decided that this is where he will be staying and no, nobody is allowed to question his decision, not even the monster preparing to bear down on him in his quest to utterly ruin the one good thing in Carlos Alvarez’ life.

“Jake,” the thing that was once Cougar snarls, “I am going to kill you if you don’t leave.  _ Please.”  _ He feels the despair in what’s left of his heart, but tears don’t come,  _ can’t _ come. Monsters don’t cry.

“I’m not leaving.” Jake’s hands slide up his naked arms and hold onto his biceps, a feeble attempt at comfort. “I trust you with my life, Cougs.”

Cougar will do everything he can to come back to his Jake, but the darkness is seeping in again and his hope is fading fast.

What’s left of him prays to a god he has quickly lost faith in:  _ please keep Jake safe. Kill me, take me, don’t let me live without him.  _ Selfish things.

Then he is made of rage and pain, descending even further away from this mortal coil, vision whiting out, dizzy as the dimensions of sanity pass him by. He is covered in oil, slick, floating. Up is down and down is sideways, and he is a creature of darkness and decay in a void that no longer knows the meaning of human vocabulary, of kindness and brightness and Jake Jensen.

‘Cougar’ no longer exists.

  
  
  
  


***

Russet curtains.

That’s the first thing he’s aware of when he blinks back into existence. He is looking at - russet curtains. He is also... on the floor. His back aches, his whole body aches. His stomach aches most of all.

_ What happened? _ he wonders, attempting to sit up. But his head feels like a million people are drilling into it at once and he has to give up that fight for now.  _ Were we on an assignment? Did I get shot? Is that why the curtains look like they are covered in blood? _

But in his curiosity, he swivels around on the floor - and he sees -

A severed hand. Not cleanly severed, either, a hand that has been  _ ripped _ free. But even the tendons have been blunted, and there are marks at the edge that he doesn’t recognize.

His full stomach gargles as though trying to tell him something. It feels like he’s swallowed... bones. Bones ground to dust by teeth too sharp and precise for anything he’s ever hunted.

Cougar crawls along the floor to avoid a repeat experience of the whole drilling thing, and what he finds...

What he finds is the evidence of a massacre.

He remembers nothing, not where he’s at nor how he got here. The last memory his tiny brain pan holds is a mission. A lab. Pooch at the computer, Jake in the van... alpha team, a terse  _ we got him _ on the comms, a  _ crack - _

Nothing.

He keeps crawling. He’s in an apartment, but it isn’t one he recognizes. It looks like there might be medals on the wall, and there are a lot of tech toys Jensen would probably have a field day with. The state of the room seems to be tip-top, military precise, except for a variety of medical instruments littered across the floor next to the bed - a crusty rag, some bloody bandages, a bottle of pain meds and one of fever reducers.

There’s nothing on the floor other than the hand and a thin trail of blood that leads to the other room. The carpet is a light beige, generic apartment crap, but he thanks that fact because the blood is easy to follow.

His head is feeling better already, so he stands and staggers to the medical tray for the pain meds. He dry swallows them and makes his way, slowly, carefully, down the hall and into a living room/ dining room combo, rounds the end of the couch -

Kneels down -

The world spins, and not from nausea or the receding headache or any physical ailment, but from a pure mental break, because -

_ Because - _

On the floor are bits and pieces of someone’s body. It has clearly been eaten; bits of flesh torn out of the legs, partially-chewed organs, like whatever had eaten this man had spit them out with extreme prejudice, bits of skull with dark blond hair attached.

It’s -

_ (Jake) _

No. No, that’s not possible. Right?

But it’s coming back now, no matter how his poor, battered mind tries to shy away - the laser that had dropped him, Jake bringing him to his apartment off-base, the rising fever dream. Warning Jake that there was something fundamentally wrong. Stark terror.

Holding Jake down on the bed, hunger a bottomless well inside him.

… Waking up with a full stomach.

Every cell of his body is screaming at him not to do it, not to look, but he has to, has to  _ know - _ no matter how impossible -

He turns. Sees Jake’s backpack and his stupid keys with the stupid Star Wars logo.

Cougar had always hated Star Wars.

The hand in the bedroom, he recalls numbly, had been the left one. At the top of Jake’s wrist, right below the thumb, had been a mole. Cougar had rubbed his own thumb along that mole time and time again in the last few weeks, holding hands like a dumb teenager as often as they could get away with it.

He stumbles, sick with fear and rising nausea, back to the bedroom. He knows what he will find, but he looks anyway, hoping against all odds that that mole won’t be there, that he won’t have torn apart his best friend, his partner, with his own goddamn  _ teeth. _

Cougar screams when he sees it. He screams until his breath runs out, and then screams some more, until his voice is hoarse, until tears and snot have covered his face and his eyes are so puffy he can no longer see.

And when he remembers those last words, the last he remembers - _ I trust you with my life  _ \- his mind snaps, and Cougar is, once again, gone.

But this time, he’s not coming back. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. :( I gave myself the sads, too, if that helps.


End file.
